Manipulate Machines, Not People
johnstanderfer.com
johnstanderfer.com
If you sell something for money, there's a single moment where your interests diverge from your customers -- when you accept payment. But the rest of you customer interactions are all about adding value.
really? just like that . . . why give up so easily? let's throw some intelligence at the problem instead of just assuming it's not possible.
The best estimates I have for what it costs google to provide service to one customer for 1/year is $20 < n < $24 and Facebook is probably more, can you name even one person of your acquaintance who would pay even $12/year for either of those services...? Even if hardly anyone else was using them? Before they were big?
So yeah, impossible, at least in the given constraints; like asking for a 50 seat airplane that's self-piloted, safer than current small planes AND costs less than $500 to build.
You might argue about my definition of impossible, but this isn't reddit, and I hope you recognize and understand that difference.
I would pay > $4 per year if it meant I controlled my Facebook data (i.e., I was the customer, not the product).
Just yesterday there was a post from Grouper talking about how they figured out basically a hack to get people not to flake out (http://blog.joingrouper.com/intro-to-social-hacking-how-we-l...). Anil Dash talks about using technology to create more civil conversations on the web (http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assh...). If you ask me, those are good developments and we should focus more on figuring out how to create online communities that are best. That may involve some manipulation but it may all be for the best.
Progressive (US car insurance company) gave my girlfriend this device that she plugs into her car's diagnostic port. The incentive is that if an insured driver agrees to use the thing and wants to "prove" they are a good driver. In return the user gets an insurance discount if their driving stats are good.
The little object does something very basic: It counts the number of "hard stops" in every trip and uses cellphone networks to report the data. People can then go look up the stats online. 2 hard stops for this trip, 7 for this trip, etc.
Eventually it turns into a sort of game to eliminate the hard stops from your driving routine. You pay more attention to driving because of it and therefore become a more attentive driver.
At the end of 6 months you send the device back and your insurance is adjusted (or not).
This is a huge win-win for software making people behave better:
1. Girlfriend gets a lower insurance rate
2. Progressive has evidence she is not an insane driver
3. Most interestingly, the device has forced her to be (seemingly) permanently more conscious about her driving and has made her a better driver. Not only does the device find bad drivers, but it can convince many to become better drivers, possibly without them even knowing it!
Literally software has consciously and unconsciously made her into a better driver and literally every party involved (her, progressive, people near her on the road) are better off for her having used this device.
At the moment it might be a nice discount for those who choose to volunteer. Its easy to see a future where it will be impossible to get affordable insurance if you opt out.
Now exchange car insurance with health insurance. My health habits are probably better than average. I do plenty of sports, no overweight, no smoking, not a heavy drinker etc.. In order to get an appropriate discount I would have to record my whole life.
Any modern web-based business must think of themselves as a media company. The software designers must ask themselves not how can I make something happen, but what content should I deliver to my users. There has been a paradigm shift in the industry. The code and how it works is irrelevant, and what matters most is the media that your service offers.
The author seems to wish that this weren't so, but unfortunately it is. I wish it weren't so, but it is. There does not seem to be any way around the issue.
Do something different. Write software that solves real problems and give it away. Fund yourself by coding for companies that solve real problems.
This isn't complicated.
I don't agree that all web-based businesses are media companies. It's possible to do real work and solve problems on the web and have nothing to do with "media" or advertising or social anything.
Giving away the tools lets the users help themselves, and frees you of the burden of having to keep the service alive and monetize users.
All of these websites are media based. These websites focus on the content that they provide. None of these services, with the exception of perhaps Google, really care about software development. All of them care about their sites content.
Because all of these websites are media based, their business models revolve around ads and click counts.
> "The downside to this model is it that the company’s and user’s interests can never be aligned because the user is not the one paying for the product."
But he doesn't expand on it. To get users you still need a good product even if it's free or users would use something else. Part of the lessons behind increasing click through rates is to build a desirable user experience. The users are not wiring you money directly, but they're still worth money indirectly. Just saying "every free product must be bad for the consumer" sounds like a simplistic over-generalization.
2) How is every business not manipulating people instead of just machines? There isn't a black or white here. You don't manipulate machines simply out of love to build a genius technological innovation. You do it to manipulate people. Each piece of hardware or line of code is put in place trying to solve the same questions the author poses for manipulating people. Which GPU I need for users to buy games? Which algorithm gives better recommendations that the user will actually click on? Businesses manipulate machines while manipulating people. Only hobbyists do otherwise.
3) Is he using Apple as an example of a company who favors manipulating machines over people? Apple are the most extreme example of the contrary. They're genius at manipulating people. Many here will point out their technology are just small evolution over what existed before. But it's their genius marketing, branding and expert people manipulation skills that convince users their products are status symbols worth of their loyalty. And there's nothing wrong with these. Every business wish they had the people expertise that Apple does. That's what make businesses work. It's genius people skills that brings genius machine skills into user's hands.
If you don't advertise, you need to charge money.
If you charge money, and a competitor launches with successful advertising, then you will go out of business since the perceived cost for their users is lower than what you need to charge to stay in business.
Not exactly sure that treating users as customers is better by much than treating them as products. How about treating users as users and let it flow from there?